Railroad Ecosystems: The Hidden Conservation Corridors Across the Landscape. When most people think of railroads, they soon think of transportation. Ecologists, however, generally recognize the importance of railroad ecosystems and railroad corridors as valuable components of the natural landscape. As development fragments forests, grasslands, and wetlands into smaller patches, wildlife generally faces growing challenges. Many […]
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Ecosystem Services. Ecosystem services refer to the benefits that humans derive from functioning ecosystems. These services can be categorized into four general types: provisioning services, regulating services, supporting services, and cultural services. Responsible and thoughtful landscaping plays a crucial role in enhancing and maximizing these ecosystem services. Provisioning Services: Provisioning services involve the tangible products
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Monarch Butterfly Garden Creating the Perfect Monarch Butterfly Garden: Beyond Milkweed Monarch butterflies are one of the most beloved pollinators in our gardens. Of course, they are famous for their epic migration and striking orange and black color schema. To support these beautiful creatures, many people plant Milkweed (Asclepias sp.), which is the essential larval
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Ecology Education. There’s a lot of noise in our world right now. Lots of distraction, not a lot of signal. It can be extremely easy for people to be swept up in dramas and agendas that have nothing to do with their actual reality or what they’re capable of producing. Unwrapping the buried treasure in
Municipal Gardens Project. In July 2013 a local paper, The Post Star wrote an article about our municipal gardens native landscaping project. Doing an eco-landscape renovation at such a busy site was quite an experience. Such an open, public space was a refreshing change. Cars honked their horns all day long, people came out of
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Recently we published an article about the link between using Japanese Barberry shrubs in landscaping and an increase in human Lyme disease infection rates in the surrounding neighborhoods. People in Saratoga Springs, Albany and Schenectady, NY are learning about this. We humans are collaborating against ourselves in a public health crisis through lazy and shortsighted
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Eco-friendly Gardens and Edible landscaping in Clifton Park, NY Edible plants can nicely augment eco-friendly gardens. In Clifton Park, NY (which is located in southern Saratoga County), there’s an eco-friendly landscaped property that we’ve used edible gardens and edible plants and herbs generously in the design. The above photo contains a June-bearing Strawberry as groundcover
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Ecological Landscape Design in Ballston Spa, NY. Sometimes a strategy ecologically savvy landscape designers use to decide what to plant where on a property is to observe what plants are already growing. The observation can be used as an ecological indicator. To illustrate, the new butterfly garden in Malta, NY, installed over the past week
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